


Velvet Glove

by scioscribe



Category: James Bond (Movies), Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Ending, Gen, Moral Ambiguity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-14
Updated: 2012-11-14
Packaged: 2017-11-18 15:46:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/562720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scioscribe/pseuds/scioscribe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>M was many things (too many things), but she wasn't, and never had been, a fool.  [Alternate ending.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Velvet Glove

**Author's Note:**

> Major spoilers for _Skyfall_ , even though it's an alternate ending, because if you know this is the alternate one, you'll be easily able to tell what the _actual_ ending was.
> 
> But oh, M, how I love you in all your difficulty and moral complexity.

“It was shallower than I expected,” she said to Bond, afterwards: hospital beds had always made her uncomfortable and Bond had often worked to the detriment of her ease as well, but pain medication weakened even the strongest constitutions, and he was an unexpectedly reassuring figure. It was the solidity of him. Say what you would about James Bond—and she had, over the years, said most of it—but he was an unmistakably _present_ man. “I’m a bit embarrassed. I suppose I thought I was being brave, but it was all bollocks after all, wasn’t it? There’ll barely be a scar.”

“Do you have many?”

More than he would ever know. Men like Bond, or rather men in general, thought that all scars were sections of damaged flesh, but M had always known better than that: her career could be measured in the scars, and what was a scar, really, but a place where you could no longer feel quite as much as you used to? Bond should have known that, too: she was a scar on his heart as surely as he was one on her own.

But love was not worthwhile; persistence was. Loyalty. (She had not been loyal to anyone in years, only to England. _Country? England_ , and that was why she had passed Bond, as much as anything else. You knew your own, especially if you made them. And Bond was M’s handiwork, as much as Silva had been.)

“I have a few,” she said curtly, because he would take liberties, having saved her life, blown up his ancestral home for her. Well, it was only Scotland. “Not as many as some. I’ve been more careful.”

“Most of mine are from you,” Bond said. “One way or the other.”

She did not take his meaning for a moment. She would suppose, afterwards, that it had been his tears that had misled her: she had forgotten that love did not mean forgiveness, necessarily. Or at least Bond’s love didn’t. He had cried, just a little, when he’d thought she was dying in the church, but he was still, and she realized it now, leaving her. He didn’t have to say it. M was many things (too many things), but she wasn’t, and never had been, a fool.

“Go on then,” she said. “It’s a waste of your time. Mallory will have me out in two months, six if I drag my heels about it. But you have your dramatic moment if you like.”

“No,” he said. “I’m done. I’ll never,” and he breathed, and for a second, he seemed very young to her, “I’ll never do anything better or worse than saving your life,” and he took her hand, and after holding it for a moment, he kissed it. “You were always both of them. The steel fist, the velvet glove. I can’t forget it anymore, even if you were right.”

“I _was_ right,” she said, because she’d done everything right even if she’d gotten everything (but him) wrong, and she knew there was a difference, and she knew that he knew it. “But you can’t trust me. I suppose I can’t blame you for that. You’ll be wasted on retirement, though, falling into bed with everyone, drinking excessively.”

“Come find me, then,” he said. “In two months or six. Come save my soul.”

“That’s not our business,” she said. “Souls. Yours or mine.”

“We’d have new business.”

“No one leaves cleanly. You think you’ll be free of it, but there’s always the news, and your memories—he looks like a man you killed, or she looks like a woman, or your latest fling fucks like someone who counted you to save her,” and he flinched, and if she was proud of being right before she was ashamed or even sorry, it only proved what she’d said: they weren’t in the business of souls. “You track the mud of your life everywhere. And I’ve lived much longer than you.”

“More dirt, if fewer scars.”

“Quite.” She leaned back in the bed and closed her eyes. “Go, if you’re going.”

And she waited for him to say something. If love was knowing, then she loved him; if love was the stupid endless fucking ache in her fingertips as she’d typed his obituary, then she loved him; if love was the heat behind her eyes, the way she’d wanted to die looking at him, the way he was her redemption (though a piss-poor one, since he was almost as flawed as she was, almost as compromised), the key to his storage locker in the drawer of her desk—if love was the scar of his love for her, of knowing that she couldn’t give Bond’s loyalty back to him—if love could be measured in such things, or calculated so coolly, or borne, even, by a woman who was disappointed by the shallowness of her wound—

But when she opened her eyes, he was gone: always fond of a disappearing act, James Bond.

 _Think on your sins_ , but M had never had to, because her sins had always had flesh to them. No one could forget sin mounted up in bodies. She had Silva, and she had Bond, and she had the hollowness in her heart, the scars of how she could settle back into her pillow, reach for the remote, and turn on the television. There was trouble somewhere in the world. Something was burning.


End file.
